May
Throughout the month of May, training the infantry of the 36th Division
became the crucial task. Attacks on dummy trenches well behind the line
were co-ordinated, and battalions took turns to leave the front for exercises
in rapid firing, bayoneting and consolidating newly won ground. Lewis0gunners
went to work under their respective commanders, and bombing competitions
were organised to encourage accurate use of the Mills bomb.
One note of unease was struck by the war diarist of the YCV’s during
a spell in the line that May :
“‘We can get practically no support from our own artillery
owing to shortage of shells and what we do get are 50% duds...”
The same complaint was made a few days later on 5 May :
“Duds about 50% - something wrong surely. Record was kept
with the following result :- Heavies, out of 24 shells, 15 failed to explode;
18 pounders, out of 12, 8 were duds”.
Despite a reorganisation of the artillery undertaken during May, this
inadequacy was to play a role in rendering the great offensive of 1 July
less effective than had been hoped and proposed.
Raids on German lines, usually at night, were now given a high priority,
in an attempt to step up the sense of oncoming battle.
The first serious and co-ordinated large scale raid carried out by the
36th Division was undertaken on the night of 7 May 1916, a night coincidentally
chosen by the Germans to raid the 1st Dorsets, part of the 32nd Division
on the right flank of the Ulstermen. The 36th’s raiding party was
from the ‘Tyrones’ (9th Inniskillings) and consisted of six
officers and eighty-four men. They were already out of their trenches
and waiting in deep cut Thiepval-Hamel road (known as the sunken road)
when the German bombardment began as a prelude to their attack on the
Dorserts. The raid went ahead, though, and six German dugouts were bombed
and a machine-gun destroyed. With one of their men killed and two wounded,
the Tyrones withdrew, but a great many more casualties occurred when the
raiders became trapped in the sunken road on their way back to the trenches.
Many had to lie there for a couple of hours pinned down by the German
gunfire. Meanwhile the Derry Volunteers came to the support of the Dorsets
and held out against German advances. The GOC of the 32nd Division was
to express warm appreciation. However, there was a feeling in some quarters
that artillery should have been present to cover the enemy machine-gun
nests, on the rise behind the German lines, that had caused such havoc
for the returning Tyrones. ( A full account of this raid as experienced
on the German side, which was written by Ralf J. Whitehead can be found
in the Resource section )
Aspell of good weather on 16 May made the Thiepval trenches dry and habitable
when the South Antrim men took over from the Co. Down Volunteers for a
spell on duty. At night the Co. Down men could hear sound from the enemy
lines which indicated that they were busy - picking, shovelling and driving
stakes into the ground. What the Ulstermen did not seem to realise was
that these sounds might spell doom to the offensive, as the Germans dug
deep into reinforced dugouts to await, and hopefully to survive, the supposedly
devastating British artillery barrage that would precede infantry attack.
At the end of the month the Battalion retired to the large training ground
known as Clairfaye Trenches where an exact reproduction of the German
trench system opposite the Ulster lines had been re-created from aerial
photographs.
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